In recent years, advances in personal computer hardware has made it possible to process audio and digital images on the desktop. These advances were aided by the development of sophisticated formats and standards for coding audio-visual information, such as movies, video, music and the like, in digital compressed formats. Such formats allow large amounts of audio/video data to be processed with relatively low cost equipment.
Under the direction of the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electro-Technical Commission (IEC), the "Moving Picture Experts Group" ("MPEG") was established to development the MPEG suit of standards for coding moving pictures and audio. The major advantage of MPEG over other video and audio standards is said to be much smaller file size for the same quality due to the efficient compression techniques employed.
MPEG encoded video files are typically "played" on a PC, Mac or other consumer electronics device using an MPEG video player and MPEG audio files are "played" using an MPEG audio player. Such players are readily available to PC users and the number of MPEG encoded video and audio files is steady growing.
As the need for more demanding and varied encoding schemes for video and audio content continue to increased, MPEG has been derived into the following categories:
MPEG 1--Coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up approximately 1.5 Mbit/s;
MPEG 2--Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information; and
MPEG 4--Coding of audio-visual objects.
Along with the development of MPEG, real-time animation on the desk top also has gained popularity in recent years. Many real-time animation programs, including upcoming MPEG-4 terminals with face and body animation capabilities, can be used to run a proprietary renderer using a proprietary face or body model. Usually, animation of a proprietary model is not compatible with MPEG-4 requirements. Furthermore, the current implementation and modification of animation parameters, like smiles or eyebrow movement, with these renderers is cumbersome and time consuming. Thus, there is a need in the art for an improved method of processing animation parameters.